


I Won't Let You Go

by Luthorchickv2



Category: Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Clones, M/M, m/m - Freeform, mention of unwilling organ donation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-19
Updated: 2011-03-19
Packaged: 2017-10-17 02:51:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/172130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luthorchickv2/pseuds/Luthorchickv2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on a prompt from Sherlockbbc_fic.:  Never Let Me Go crossover.<br/>Maybe Sherlock is a donor and John is his carer? Or they're Hailsham students? I don't know, I just want something set in the Never Let Me Go 'verse.:<br/>John and David are donors who just want to be together. They find that David's original, Sherlock Holmes, just might be the answer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Won't Let You Go

**Author's Note:**

> Some knowledge of Never Let Me Go, either movie or book is necessary to understand what is going on here. In a nutshell, humans have created clones to use as organ donors. Some of these clones attend a special school, Hailsham and are treated more or less as humans before they start their donations.
> 
> This kind of consumed me. I've never had a story flow they way this has. Apologies for any mistakes.Original promp and post are here. http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/7277.html?thread=34380653#t34380653

It wasn’t until we moved to the cottages from Hailsham that David and I felt free to admit our love for each other.

Away from the familiarity of the other students we had grown up with and who had all paired up in male/female couples, it finally felt safe to be together, to let our hands do more then merely linger when passing a plate, or to openly walk arm in arm. We felt brave enough to choose a room with one large bed, instead of a singles room or a room with two beds.

Our first day David stood in the living room still wearing his ragged knee length black coat and the silly black scarf I had surreptitiously purchased for him at the last sale, and had replied that no we would only be needing one bed. My love exploded for him in that moment. He was so brave, dark curls flopped over onto his forehead, grey eyes daring anyone to make a comment on our sleeping arrangements. He extended his hand towards me, a hint of vulnerability in his stare as if pleading with me to be as brave as he. And what could I do but extend my hand and grasp his.

And that was the end of it. No one commented on it, on David and me. And we were happy for a time. I stopped drawing and turned to writing, David would spend hours reading the few books that graced the shelves and when he got bored of reading them, he would painstaking copy any pictures from the book or arrange a still life and draw for hours. When we were at Hailsham his pictures were always selected for the gallery. Mine never were.

David would whisper scathingly witty observations about the others in my ear and solve the copper shows on the telly in the first 15 minutes of the show. We would stroll for hours on the hiking paths hand in hand and would glory in being in love and together.

But it couldn’t last. We had both known it wouldn’t. Slowly the others in the cottage would get called to start making their donations. Every time the vans would pull away we would curl together in bed, clutching each other, leaving bruises. I would cry sometimes. David never did.

Before long there was only one other group of people would had been there longer then we. A tension filled the air. A boy and girl from this group had approached David and I about a rumor they had heard regarding Hailsham students. Anderson and Sally had heard that there was a special arrangement for Hailsham students, where if they could prove their love, they could postpone making their first donations and have more time together. David would spend hours about complaining about Anderson’s stupidity and Sally never treated him well but there was some trace of pain in his eyes when he told them that he had never heard of such an arrangement. Neither of us had. Anderson reacted with anger, Sally with tears.

That night as we held each other, David cried. Big sobs that echoed Sally’s earlier ones. It was then that he confided in me that he wished their was such a arrangement because he couldn’t bear the though of being parted from me. He could take the donations, he said, if he were with me. But there was no promise we would be in the same donation center. He broke down. That night I had to be the strong one, to cradle him. I had never felt so helpless.

It was in this atmosphere of tension when David discovered his Original. He had been absorbing the new magazines, when an article by H. Watson caught his attention. It wasn’t the article itself that was interesting, though the title certainly was “The Science of Deduction”, it was the photo that accompanied the article, a photo of the subject, one Sherlock Holmes.

It was David. Down to the stubborn curl that would never stay tucked back, down to the small crows feet creases near David’s grey eyes.

“John”, he whispered to me. “It’s me!” The article talked about the work Sherlock did as a consulting detective for the Scotland Yard, the crimes he had solved working off of the most minute data. It mentioned his brother, Mycroft Holmes and that he worked for the government, working to put a halt to breeding humans as organ donors.

We must have sat there for hours staring at the photo, reading and rereading the article. The magazine never made it back to the common room. David was unusually quiet and distracted that afternoon. I thought it was the shock of discovering his Original, after all it almost never happened. He sat on the couch and stared out the window for much of the afternoon. I wrapped a blanket around his shoulders after an hour and would have to re-adjust it every so often as it slide down off of him. He would turn and glare at me every time I did it, as is to say why do I need this blanket, stop distracting me. I thought it was the shock but it wasn’t.

That night we were in bed when David whispered into my ear a plan of escape. No one ever had but that wasn’t going to stop David. He wanted to live, he wanted both of us to live and to be together. He wanted us to have a life that was more then just donations and he felt Mycroft Holmes would be the answer. If it didn’t work, we would be separated anyway so why not try.

He laid out his plan to take one of the cars the day after the next round of donors were driven to the centers, how no one would miss us until evening check in. By then we would be to London. He showed me a scrap of paper with an address copied out of an old phonebook. An address possibly belonging to Mycroft Holmes. I didn’t want to hope but as it was on our first day, when he reached out his hand for mine, I grasped his.

The next week the vans came to take the next group of donors. Sally and Anderson were not going to the same center and it took three people to separate them from each other. For as long as I live I will never forget the sound of Anderson screaming for Sally, tossing himself again the back window of the van, tearing running down his face, fists pounding the glass. And Sally sobbing, reaching out a single hand to caress the glass in front of Anderson’s face before being restrained and placed in the other van. The two vans left the drive way together but turned in opposite directions, carrying the two further and further away from each other.

It made David and I all the more determined to get out, to never let each other go. The next day we borrowed the keys to a beat up red car and started our bid to freedom. We drove for hours. It was nearing dark, the time we would be checking in when the great city of London appeared in front of us. We abandoned the car near a tube station on the outskirts. For a moment we both sat in the car, watching the people pass by.

“They have no idea, do they?” David asked, staring at them. “What we go through to save them.” He abruptly got out and waited for me to as well.

“It’s hard not to hate them, not to hate each and every one of them for being free, for forcing us to give our lives for them, as if we are less.” I reached for his hand across the faded red hood.

“If they hadn’t” I replied. “I wouldn’t have known you.”

He blinked and smiled. “And I wouldn’t give you up for the world.”

Carefully concealing our medical cuffs, David and I made our away across the city, navigating the underground, mindful of the silent clock in the backs of our minds, when they would notice that we hadn’t checked in yet and when they would sound the alarm.

It was close to nine when we arrived at the townhouse at the address. David did not hesitate. He marched right up to the door and rang the bell. An older man dressed in a well pressed suit answered the door. He gestured us in and told David that his brother was waiting to see him. We were ushered into the living room where a man older than us wearing a velvet dressing gown sat on a couch reading a file of papers.  
He glanced up at us and froze.

“You are not my brother.” He stood and walked towards us.

“No.” David stood his ground, not flinching as Mycroft raised a hand to stroke his cheek.

“I see.” He trailed a hand down David’s body coming to rest at the metal medical cuff on his wrist.

“I see.” He repeated. He glanced at me, at my face, my medical cuff and the way my fingers tangled with David’s before turning back to David and grasping his shoulders.

“I will protect you, you are safe here.”

And we were. Far from occupying a minor position in the government, Mycroft seemed, at times, to be the government. Within hours of us arriving at his door he had a specialist come to remove our cuffs. Sherlock arrived at some point after that and immediately peppered David with questions until Mycroft called a halt to it. Within a week David and I were settled into a flat of our own, 221 b Baker Street, with a lovely landlady Mrs. Hudson, and living our lives together. Mycroft assured us we wouldn’t be bothered.

It was been two years since we escaped the cottages, since we escaped our fate. Right after, Mycroft worked even harder to stop the breeding of humans for organs. A year later they passed the bill and those still waiting in donation centers were free if they were healthy enough and if they weren’t they were very well taken care of. It was too late for Anderson and Sally though. They were so lost without each other that they both completed on their first donations. Every so often I think about them and hope that some where that they are together and happy, in a way they weren’t allowed to be in life.

We join Sherlock and Mycroft for dinner every week, a built in family. The two of them fight like cats and dogs but love each other. They have graciously extended that love to David and I.

The day after we moved into the flat Mycroft came around with paper work for us to sign. He didn’t want to presume to create names for us and let us choose. He did offer David use of Holmes as a last name seeing as how they all shared DNA. He accepted and became David Holmes. I choose the last name of the person who wrote “Science of Deduction” as a way to honor how we were able to claim our freedom. I became John Watson.

There is no ending to a tale such as this except to say that David and I, and others are now free, free to love, to live, to forge our own ways in the world and we are happy.

The End.


End file.
